Unwatchable Recap: 91-100

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Welcome to the Unwatchable Halftime Report! Yes, we’ve made it halfway through our journey up the IMDb Bottom 100 list and it’s time to look back at all the good times we’ve had so far. It all began on April 3, 2008, when I reported here on an article from The Guardian by Sam Richards, who subjected himself to a handful of titles from the list he says “exists to catalogue films that have been viewed out of error, obligation or last-turkey-in-the-shop desperation.”

As I said upon launching the Unwatchable project on April 28 of last year, “Any moron can sit through a few of these godawful pictures; it takes a special kind of idiot to watch all 100 of them. And I’m here to tell you, loyal Screengrab readers, I am that idiot. For your entertainment and my own detriment, I am going to watch and review them all, starting with #100 and working my way to the top. Of course, the IMDb list is constantly changing based on the whims of the voting public, but I will be sticking with the Bottom 100 I downloaded on the day I decided to tackle this most awe-inspiring task.”

And it’s true, I am still working from that very list. All this week I’ll be offering you the chance to catch up with Unwatchables you may have missed. I’ve already blocked many of these from my memory, so it should be quite a treat for me, too. Let’s begin with Unwatchables # 91-100!

100. Devil Fish. “A bony dolphin trainer, a beer-swilling scientist and the local sheriff join forces to battle a waterlogged monster that doesn’t actually appear to be much of a shark at all, given that it has tentacles. In a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease, the solution they arrive at is to douse the Everglades with gasoline and set it ablaze with flamethrowers.”

99. The Honeymooners. “Drained of all that hilarious domestic violence humor that might prove upsetting to a modern audience (Ralph’s “To the moon, Alice!” is transformed into a lovey-dovey sweet nothing), The Honeymooners is a decidedly mediocre but good-natured family comedy that has no business being on the Bottom 100 list. Ralph says it best: ‘You just a regular UPN sitcom, huh, Alice?’”

98. Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor. “Of course, this story is only the most threadbare clothesline possible on which to hang as many sessions of roundhouse kicking, neck-snapping and nut-crunching as possible. If you put 100 monkeys in a room with 100 typewriters and asked them all to write a kickboxing movie, 99 of them would come up with this one. But let’s be honest – anyone who watches Kickboxer 4 on purpose is expecting and hoping for only one thing: lots of people getting kicked in the face.”

97. Bolero. “Among its IMDb keywords are ‘Female Nudity,’ ‘Female Frontal Nudity,’ ‘Female Full Frontal Nudity’ and ‘Box Office Flop.’ All of this is accurate.”

96. Track of the Moon Beast. “You might think there’s an unlimited amount of humor to be derived from the story of a man who gets a shard of meteorite imbedded in his skull which causes him to turn into a giant lizard. But you would be wrong.”

95. Marci X. “With its flat television lighting, wokka-wokka music and cast of sitcom actors pitching their performances to the back row of the studio audience, Marci X is a migraine from beginning to end. It’s no wonder Chris Rock rejected it, telling Entertainment Weekly ‘It's the worst script I've ever gotten... I'd have been happier getting an envelope full of anthrax.’ And I’ve seen some of the movies Chris Rock has actually agreed to do, so you know that’s really saying something.”

94. Invasion of the Neptune Men. “The Neptunians – Neptunites? Neptunesians? – emerge from the craft in silvery suits, with slot machines on their heads, and naturally their first impulse is to strangle the small children.”

93. Howling III: The Marsupials. “There’s a bus full of werewolf nuns, a ballet dancer who turns werewolf in mid-performance, a were-skeleton that comes back to life, a leather-boy version of Alfred Hitchcock, a soundtrack full of synthpop power ballads that sound like Beverly Hills Cop rejects, and there’s even Dame Edna, years before her U.S. stardom.”

92. I Accuse My Parents. “This schmuck can’t amuse himself for an hour or so after school, particularly when the hot-to-trot neighbor lady is always dropping by for a drink? It’s about now that we begin to speculate Jimmy may be a little ‘slow.’”

91. Horrors of Spider Island. “Saved from unwatchability by a groovy bikini dance interlude and the exciting conclusion wherein the girls, armed with torches, chase the spider-man into a pit of quicksand. I’ve said it before, but I'll say it again - you just don’t hear much about quicksand anymore.”

Unwatchable #76: “Kickboxer 3: The Art of War”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

The Internet Movie Database is a powerful engine that can be used for both good and evil, and those of us who have ceded a portion of our lives to its control can find ourselves victims of some capricious whims indeed. In the early days of the Unwatchable project, long before I’d been beaten down by the likes of It’s Pat and Anus Magillicutty, I first encountered the Kickboxer series in the form of episode four, The Aggressor. Now, more than two months later, I find myself face-to-face with Kickboxer 3: The Art of War.

Some confusion results. Kickboxer 4 opened with a lengthy montage, presumably made up of clips from the previous installments, designed to bring us up to speed on the story. So I assumed I had already seen a miniaturized version of Kickboxer 3…but now that I’ve actually seen the movie, I can’t see how it connects to its follow-up. It seems to take place outside the carefully established continuity of the Kickboxer series; the villainous Tong Po goes unseen and unmentioned, and our hero David Sloane (Sasha Mitchell) has a Miyagi-esque mentor who appears in none of the other films. I notice that both Kickboxer 2 and 4 are directed by chronic offender Albert Pyun, whereas Kickboxer 3 is directed by Rick King (Prayer of the Rollerboys). I can only assume that King’s work did not fit into Pyun’s vision for the series, and he chose to ignore it entirely. I’d research this matter further if I thought anyone gave a crap.

Anywhat, The Art of War finds Sloane and his wise old Asian mentor Xian (Dennis Chan) traveling to Rio for a big match. Shortly after they arrive, street urchin Marcos steals their camera and Sloane is forced to chase and put the beat-down on the lad. This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, and Sloane takes both Marcos and his jailbait sister Isabella under his wing. Lane (Richard Comar), the slimy manager of Sloane’s slated kickboxing opponent, is a slave-pimp in his off-hours, and he kidnaps Isabella with plans to sell her off to the highest bidder. Lane has his fortune riding on his own fighter, so it’s imperative that Sloane lose the upcoming match. To that end, he makes Sloane a deal: he will let Isabella go if Sloane complies with a special training regimen he’s cooked up. (He’s already asked Sloane to throw the fight and been turned down, but that was before Isabella was kidnapped. Presumably Sloane would be more willing to go along with the plan now that a child’s life is at stake, but then we wouldn’t get to enjoy the scenes of Sloane running up a hill with a backpack full of rocks and getting dragged behind a boat.)

The high point of Kickboxer 3 arrives with a montage of wise Xian’s efforts to heal Sloane in time for the fight. He collects various roots and mouse tails and the venom from a snake to prepare a healing elixir, then smears Sloane’s body with some sort of fungal poultice. Hey, it works! Sloane kicks ass and takes names and everyone lives happily ever after until Kickboxer 4. The question I’m left to wrestle with is whether or not Kickboxer 3 is really 22 bad movies worse than Kickboxer 4. On this score, I suppose it is: Kickboxer 4 features a lot more people getting kicked in the face.

Previously on Unwatchable:
77. BloodRayne 2: Deliverance
78. The Quick and the Undead
79. Anus Magillicutty
80. The Smokers
81. Soccer Dog: The Movie

The Screengrab : kickboxer 4: the aggressor

Unwatchable Recap: 91-100

Unwatchable #76: “Kickboxer 3: The Art of War”